QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Canada Emergency Business Account
March 28, 2023
My question is for the government leader in the Senate.
All honourable senators will remember the Canada Emergency Business Account, or CEBA, loans to help small businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. When the Trudeau government told Canadians the CEBA loans program was being administered by Export Development Canada, we believed that to be the case. No one had any reason to believe otherwise.
Last month, documents released to The Globe and Mail through an access to information request told a different story. In fact, the Trudeau government paid the consulting firm Accenture at least $61 million to administer this program and never disclosed it.
Leader, whatever happened to your government being open by default? Why did it outsource the CEBA program and keep that information secret?
The government’s programs that were put into place to help Canadians were largely successful in helping Canadians get through the pandemic. The government used the expertise of the civil service and the public service, who worked in extraordinarily diligent, unprecedented and efficient ways, to deliver what they could. In light of the extraordinary circumstances of the global pandemic and the demands and expectations that government would act as it did, the government also used outside sources to make sure that Canadians received the benefits they needed.
The Trudeau government never proactively disclosed that Accenture was administering the CEBA program. It kept this information from parliamentarians and from taxpayers. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business told The Globe and Mail that it had thousands of contracts with the Trudeau government about various issues with the CEBA loans and had no idea that Accenture was behind all of it. Export Development Canada has acknowledged that this arrangement is ongoing, so we have reason to believe that the Trudeau government has given Accenture more than $61 million.
Leader, what is the total value of the contracts given to date to Accenture to administer the CEBA loans, and how much more will it receive?
Thank you for the question. I don’t have that information, but I’ll make inquiries.
